


The Fall

by thedevilchicken



Category: Priest (2011)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Community: smallfandomfest, Drabble Sequence, M/M, Post-Canon, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 23:12:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4367951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall, they meet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest 17 - the prompt was "they woke up one day and realized that there'd be no happily ever after."
> 
> Assumes that the deleted scene where Priest basically says Black Hat lived is correct and he actually did survive the fire!

City Seven was a trap. Everything was traps, when he dreamed and when he woke. 

The queen was there, making the city her hive under factory smog. A few had escaped the attack but the rest were dead or chained or worse. The scale was vertiginous, thousands caged like cattle for their blood. _His_ train was not the only one. 

No sunlight advantage for the priests under city smog. Three were cut down quickly. Perhaps the priestess escaped still living when he screamed for her to run. He was taken alive. 

He suspected in the end he’d wish he’d died. 

***

They kept him apart from the others, caged and chained in dim light where his eyes strained to see. He could feel their eyes on him. Then _he_ came. 

Neither spoke; silent in the gloom he looked familiar, like the man he’d known. Then light caught his eyes and he was different. The priest knew what he was. 

He spent hours by the cage, still or pacing, his presence keeping others away. The priest watched him, wanted to speak but didn’t have the words to say he was sorry for what he’d become. 

He wished he’d died at Sola Mira. 

***

When rescue came, _he_ wasn’t there. 

The priestess broke him out, Hicks with her, sheriff heading a jailbreak. There were more priests left than he’d imagined; they’d been separated by the Church, spread through cities, now united. They couldn’t kill the whole hive, maybe just three quarters: the queen escaped. The priest helped free grateful survivors. _He_ wasn’t there. 

Then there he was. Ten priests subdued him, wary of his power, a blade in his chest keeping him still lest it graze his heart. 

“She left me,” he said, bitter. “I’ll take you to her.”

He pulled out the blade. 

***

He was chained like that mattered. The priest knew he stayed because he wanted to.

Travel by day, watches by night, and he kept _him_ beside him, no one else trusted. Hicks asked why he didn’t kill him; he couldn’t say. He wasn’t sentimental. 

Sola Mira was three days’ ride. It could have been a lie but he didn’t believe so. He saw the way he looked at him in firelight, the way he’d used to except the colour in his eyes. This wasn’t betrayal. 

The priest kept him with him. It wasn’t because he couldn’t let him go again.

***

The night before the morning when they struck, he had the dream again. When he woke he was being watched; he’d seen him fall but there he was, cross-legged in the dust. 

“You fell,” said the priest. 

“You let go,” he replied. 

“That’s not true.”

“It’s the truth that she told me.”

“Then she lied.”

He smiled toothily. “She lied about many things.”

They’d used to lie together side by side at night, not touching because touching was sin. The priest pulled him down beside him; he touched his face in the dark. 

“I’ve never lied to you,” he said. 

***

There were devastating losses at Sola Mira but they killed every vampire present, then _he_ killed the queen. The priest understood; it had to be him. 

They burned out the hive then they buried their dead in the sand. Twelve were left, only twelve of all the nameless faces he’d known. 

He was there after hands still bloody under gloves, face bloody beneath the brim of his new hat. It was vampire blood. He couldn’t feed from it and they hadn’t fed him. 

He opened his wrist. Their eyes met. Pointedly, the others didn’t stare as he let him feed. 

***

The remaining twelve each chose a city to check for strays or worse. They set a rendez-vous then raced away; the priest took him with him on a bike of his own, no longer chained. He didn’t trust him but he didn’t not. 

City Seven was almost as dead as they’d left it, only three vampires left and they didn’t last long. Two on three, it was easy. 

He slept the night in a locked room just in case, and he dreamed. When he woke, _he_ was clasping his arm. 

“You fell,” said the priest. 

“I’m still falling,” he replied.

***

Under Monsignor Chamberlain the Church believed the vampire menace but could not wholly condone the actions of the priests. Excommunication should have felt just like damnation but instead he felt relieved. 

_He_ kept his mouth closed when Chamberlain spoke and didn’t show his teeth. The Monsignors knew they could have killed them in seconds; that was what the Church had made them, killers to kill killers. Faith kept him from it. He kept _him_ from it. 

When they left together, no one tried to stop them leaving. He’d gone against the Church but he still had God in his heart. 

***

Hicks and Lucy took them in on the ranch in the desert where nothing grew, understandably cautious but Hicks had seen him kill the queen. They let them stay, put up a shack away from the house so they all had some privacy. 

They’d used to lie together side by side beneath the stars, looking but not touching because the Church would call that sinful. He’d confessed his desires and the Church forgave, but without the Church sin was what they made it; when they touched, it was something else entirely.

His body was everything he’d thought it would be.

***

Work was hard but they raised water, grew crops, fed themselves, sold the rest in town, made a living. They could barter the labour of two ex-priests for almost anything. No one asked why they needed so many chickens or saw the bloodstained bowls he drank from. 

At night he had the dream again; when he woke, he clasped his arm, pressed his mouth to his. He always tasted bloody even when he wasn’t. 

“You fell,” said the priest. 

“You fell with me,” he replied. 

There’d be no happily ever after, not for them. But perhaps _ever after_ was enough.


End file.
